I was incapable of managing
The insanity in which I was raised.
Helpless to act, powerless to control.
Only a scared young child with no skills,
I quickly learned to adapt to survive.
Fearful, I did what was necessary
To limit the pain inflicted on me.
“Don’t talk, trust, or feel” was my mantra.
I turned inside myself. Made myself small.
Wanting to disappear from the harsh words
And raised voices, I withdrew to my room,
Trying to use books to combat my fear.

Any situation could turn angry.
Kind words said in derogatory tones
Were often the first indication of
The meanness to come. In roll the storm clouds.
Yelling, stomping, slamming doors echoing
Throughout the house. Anxiety ran high.
All close objects were used for punishment.
My fault, I was told, when the yard stick broke
Across my back. I just wasted money.
Red metal spoons, belts with shiny buckles,
Even fly swatters were her instruments
To teach me to be a good little girl.

Most things I said were labeled “arguing”.
Arguing earned me many punishments:
Writing five hundred matching sentences,
Cleaning until every room was spotless,
Being confined to my bedroom, alone.
I kept quiet until I erupted,
Unable to continue swallowing
My speech, I vomited anger right back.
Tried to hold it in, but wasn’t able.
Indignantly livid, my screams matched theirs.
Both my incensed feet stomped in time with theirs.
Though my door slammed harder, faster than theirs.

Not just fear, I endured criticism.
Nothing about me was acceptable.
My very presence brought irritation.
The list of things “wrong” with me was endless:
Smart mouth, quick temper, fat knees, chewed nails,
Silly beliefs, grades in school, saggy boobs,
Bushy eyebrows, clothing choice, fav movies,
Vocabulary, diet, music tastes.
I learned their lesson: they thought me worthless.
Good only for mocking and hard labor.
I considered myself Cinderella,
Being abused by family who hates her.

It was made clear I mattered far less than
My siblings. Our treatment was off balance.
No wrong came from them. No right came from me.
The easy scapegoat, it was all my fault.
No matter what happened, I took the blame.
No wonder my anger grew at warp speed.
I believed all the words they said to me.
I knew no better – a helpless child.
No one knew it would grow to consume me.
It was assumed I’d get past “growing pains”.
I was just a normal adolescent.
So everyone thought. So I was told…

Scared child to maladjusted adult,
Unsure how to act in society.
Friends were never as close as I wanted.
They’d show interest and I’d suffocate them,
Not understanding why ev’ryone left.
I did all I could to make them happy.
I thought it my job to please those people.
I lost myself to be who they wanted,
And then was crushed when I also lost them.
Soon I became numb and kept others out.
Easier than allowing them inside.
They wouldn’t stick around long, anyhow.

All wrapped up, I isolated myself.
People, places and things terrified me.
Especially people. Angry people.
Angry ones who had power over me.
My boss’ loud, raised voice made me tremble.
Panic would arise at the mere thought of
Conversing with those in authority.
Making it happen was impossible.
No matter how tolerant and gentle,
I see a monster in my boss’ chair;
Waiting for fuck ups. Waiting to eat me.
Despite its presence, I felt no mercy.

I’ve known in my being that I’m just wrong.
Between the two of us, you’re always right.
I’m stupid, thoughtless, silly, just plain dumb.
All your kind words hit me like pointed barbs.
I know that you can’t possibly believe
The positive things you say about me.
What’s the set up? What’s coming at me next?
There’s no fucking way that you could like me.
You don’t know me yet. Not the “real” me.
Just wait until I show you who’s inside.
I know me, and I despise who I am.
My inner view is spot on. Give it time.

Numbing out as I have, I’m just not sure
How to express what I’m feeling within.
I’m incapable of telling myself
What’s going on. Far less could I tell you.
I can’t name most emotions, likely cuz
All I feel is numbness, anger, guilt.
Guilt pops up when I think of myself first.
Don’t worry, I won’t stand up for myself.
I know that’s wrong. Easier to deal
With feeling shat on and walked all over
Than to think I have the right to matter.
I know I exist to give in to you.

The cherry on top is the drama that
Endlessly follows me. I can’t stop it.
I feel calm when the chaos starts up.
I’m knocked off my feet when things are steady.
I don’t know how to let life be peaceful.
That’s just not normal. Doesn’t feel right.
I am more settled when you start to yell.
Despite my fear, anger is a welcome
Friend. Comfortable and predictable.
I can handle disorder and discord.
Tranquility is unknown and scary.
Commotion is the drug that will soothe me.

As the fog of denial releases
Its hold on me, I can see the laundry
List of bad behaviors that I possess.
No longer a child, I can hardly
Claim helplessness. No more in denial,
I’ve lost excuses not to act, to change.
In the past, I’d rebuff accusations
Of the precise actions just detailed,
When I did all of the above…and worse.
I now see my games, manipulation
Of people and, of course, my victimhood.
Others saw my conduct clearer than I.

Now that I’m aware, now that I can see,
I can take the twelve necessary steps
To endeavor the changes desired
In my life. No way will it be easy,
But the program is so simply laid out.
All I have to do is follow, and I’ll
Not help but see drastic differences.
Read the book, attend meetings, call people,
Share honestly and, above all, trust GOD.
I know it’s a process, not an event,
But slowly, surely, life will get better.
There is hope at the end of this tunnel.

Already I feel a weight lifted.
Seeing this makes life more manageable.
I’m still powerless. I have no control
Over other people, places or things,
But there is one person I can control.
I now have the wisdom to know that the
Only person I can force to act is
Me, myself and I. Now, as an actor,
I am no longer that helpless child,
Just tossed about and reacting to life.
I no more need to be miserable.
I’m not perfect, but GOD’s perfecting me.

I’ll continue out of isolation.
I’ll be rigorously honest, even
With myself. I’ll reach out to others and
Let them in. Trust them. Be vulnerable.
I’ll stand up for and take care of myself.
I’ll show and feel love, intimacy.
It will be a gift, not an unknown fear.
With the help of GOD and fellow trav’lers,
I’ll know I matter. That I’m important.
I’ll expect the best and I will get it.
I’ll reparent myself with lots of love.
I’ll improve and I’ll be helpless no more.

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I have registered for the NAMI Walk. For anyone who doesn’t know, NAMI stands for National Alliance for Mental Illness. I’m trying to raise money, and all of it goes to NAMI! As I don’t know a lot of people in real time, I thought that I would reach out to those of you who followed my blog. All of you would understand the toll mental illness takes on the person suffering and the surrounding friends and family members. You don’t need to pledge much to sponsor me. Every little bit helps! If you’re willing to donate to this awesome cause, please visit my NAMI sponsorship page HERE. Thanks, everyone!!

**There was some kind of issue with the link to my new blog. I’ve fixed it, and wanted to repost this with the correct site.

After a lot of careful thought, consideration, and prayer, I have started a new WordPress site. I said that I would share my site with the followers of strugglingwithbpd when, and if, I made the decision to start a new blog. I may still blog on here from time to time, but it will be rare.

My new site is GOD’s Beautiful Sovereignty. As I’m sure you can tell, it will be about GOD/religion/Christianity/the Bible/etc. I will be discussing the active role that GOD takes in our lives. Feel free to check it out if you want. If this doesn’t sound like something you’re interested in, no worries!

Thanks to everyone who has followed my crazy journey the past two years plus years on this site. I may still have a thing or two to post about recovering from BPD in the future.

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I forgive you for your constant criticisms and put downs of me. I now know that you hated yourself, and were only able to see the negative aspects of others. It somehow made your failings and short comings seem smaller. I understand that making other people feel badly made you feel better.

I forgive you for focusing so much on my weight, even though you filled the house with junk food, sugar, and pizza. I now know that you had your own issues with food. You felt better about indulging when I did it with you, and it gave you a chance to unleash the guilt and shame you felt towards yourself onto another. Somehow, if I overate with you, it made you feel not as bad. By telling me I was too fat, you were able to safely express the feelings you felt towards yourself.

I forgive you for constantly trying to control and micromanage my life. I now know that you felt your life had been spiraling out of control for a long, long time. By clamping down on me, you were able to feel you had a handle on things without making any difficult changes in your life.

I forgive you for making me always feel inferior to everyone and everything. I now know you struggled with feelings of self-worth, but weren’t strong enough to overcome them. I understand how that can make a person feel like they’re drowning, and without hope.

I forgive you for making me believe that my thoughts and feelings didn’t matter. I now know you felt that you didn’t matter, and you had no idea how to express it. I understand you projected your feelings onto me. I know how you had been stepped on by life.

I forgive you for making me feel unloved. I now know you had no experience of self-love. I can also imagine how difficult it was to cope with the fact that your husband preferred your eldest daughter over yourself. I understand you didn’t feel loved for most of your life, and you felt I had taken the only person who had any chance of really loving you. I forgive you for making it obvious that you favored my siblings over me. I now know you felt that I received more “love” than I deserved. I know how that hurt you. I know you didn’t know what to do.

I forgive you for not protecting me when you should have. I now know that you, yourself, were a victim of your choices and circumstances. I understand you were too weak to shield me from the dangers of this world.

I forgive you for making me think all of the above was my fault. I now know these problems were a direct result of the unresolved issues in your life. In your soul. This was always about you, and never about me. I understand I was a child with no control, and you were the adult.

I forgive you, and I pity you. I am strong. I have overcome. You are not. You cannot. You truly are a prisoner. May you find peace one day.

“I guess we are who we are / Headlights shining in the dark night I drive on…” ~Eminem ‘Headlights’

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I have decided that this will be my last post on my Struggling With BPD blog. I have been blogging under this address for almost two years. When I originally started this blog, I was trying to work out my many mental and emotional issues, and I was hoping this would be a therapeutic way to deal with my borderline personality disorder. It seems that this blog has fulfilled its purpose. According to the standards set forth in the DSM-IV, I no longer meet the criteria for BPD, and I haven’t for several months. I feel that I can no longer blog under this address, and am considering starting a different blog. I don’t know the topic of my next blog, or even if there will be one, but as soon as I’ve made the decision, I will post the address, just in case anyone who has been following me is interested.

I have been contemplating the decision to write my final post on this blog for several weeks. I have noticed that I have not been writing in the past six months nearly as much as I have in the past. To be honest, I just haven’t felt like writing about something that would “fit” into this blog. I am at a different place in my life than I was when I started this, and my head is not nearly as muddled as it used to be, so I haven’t felt the need to post.

I have enjoyed blogging here, and I very much appreciate all the comments and advice I have received. I will keep this blog address public, and will respond to comments as they come. I hope everyone is able to find peace and happiness. I’ve learned it’s a hard life if those things are lacking.

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AWESOME post! Nice reminder that WE are in control, and cannot put the responsibility for our happiness, or the blame for our pain, on other people. Don’t place your expectations on others. Remember that one only has control over their reaction to a situation…not the situation itself. There are valuable lessons to be learned by all in this post. Thank you, rebeccainspiresnow!

“Don’t let me down.” Remember that time when you believed that someone held the answer to your happiness? Remember when you had expectations and people met them? Hopefully you grew up with food, shelter and love. Some of us didn’t get all three at the same time. And it was then that don-don-don-doooooon, we were disappointed!

Thus began the hunt for people you could depend upon and trust. Your best friend. Your teacher. Your first love. Your spouse. And then, they showed their humanity, made mistakes and let you down. Now you are self-reliant and subscribe to the best approach: “I”ll just do it myself, it’s faster/better/easier/safer that way.”

Alas, it’s exhausting to live like that, isn’t it?

Expectations: To paraphrase author Elizabeth Gilbert in her TED talk about the weight of creative genius, she said that expecting someone to take responsibility for that genius is like, “asking someone to…

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So it looks like Crazy Jay, the puppies and I are going to be heading north for the weekend.

There was a lovely (not-so-lovely) little (not-so-little) chemical spill in a river VERY nearby where we live. We have been told not to use tap water to drink, wash clothes, bathe, or anything other than to flush toilets and put out fires. There is a sickeningly sweet smell in the air for several miles around our house. It’s been described as smelling like “licorice” or “cough syrup”. The water coming from our sink, toilet and tub smell the same. Being outside for too long today has made me dizzy and nauseas, and Jay has been sick and vomiting all day due to the smell. He’s stuck at home, which is only about two miles away from the chemical spill. I’m about ten miles away at work. I still can’t use the water here, but at least the air isn’t rife with a smell that makes me sick. We have decided that it’s probably not safe to stick around at our house this weekend, so we are driving about 80 miles north, to a city that has not been affected. Since we’ve had to stay in hotels so much for my work, we have several free night stays at a couple different hotels, and are going to take advantage of two free nights this weekend.

This morning when I was driving into work, still feeling sick from the errands I ran beforehand, I was trying very hard not to worry about the chemical spill, and the lack of bottled water in the area. I used my fall back affirmation:

All is well. Everything is working for my highest good. Only good can come from this situation. I am safe.

Now, honestly, that may not be the best affirmation to use in this situation, but it is the only one I could think of while driving and feeling muddle headed due to the chemical in the air. I think a better affirmation would be along the lines of there being nothing I can do about the situation, and trying to feel calm in spite of that. Either way, my affirmation worked! At least, part of it. Good HAS come from this situation. The fambly and I are going away for the weekend. We will take a break from a weekend of running errands and doing laundry, and just RELAX. Hopefully by the time we get back to town Sunday afternoon, the majority of this mess will be resolved. I am confident that between FEMA and the National Guard, things will be taken care of quickly. Let’s hope THAT affirmation works!

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I listen to Eminem…a lot. I think his music is witty, creative, well worded, and just over all hilarious. One of the things I like most about his music (besides the way he can paint an amazing picture with his words) is that most of his songs have a message. Not just raping “sluts”, doing drugs and killing women, as some might think. An actual message. A MEANING to his music.

He released a song on his newest album called “Headlights”. In the song, he basically apologizes to his mother (his past songs chronicle the constantly deteriorating relationship they have/had) for the things he has said to her and about her, and he says that he forgives her for what she’s done to him.

That song has gotten me thinking about my own birth mother. It has been a couple months since I decided to forgive my entire birth family, and the people I feel have wronged me throughout my life. As I’ve mentioned before, just because I forgive someone doesn’t mean what they did was right, or that I condone it. It simply means that I no longer choose to hold onto the anger and bitterness that lingers when one is hurt over and over.

I’ve also recently been toying with the idea of how I view my birth parents, namely my birth mother. I try not to think about my birth father. I am not yet at the point where I can consciously wrap my head around what he did and be ok with it. I WANT to forgive him, which I’m told is the main thing. Anyway, I know that in September of last year, I wrote a post stating that I did not think my birth parents did the best they could when raising me, which seems to imply that they knew the impact they were having on me, and purposefully continued anyway, disregarding my feelings. My views have changed on this subject.

I believe that my birth parents, and my extended birth family, DID do the best they could. I believe the people in a particular church who abandoned me did the best they could. I believe that everyone who has ever hurt me did the best they could.

A person can only behave in a way that they know. If a person has been raised around critiscm and hate, that is the way they will be around others until they LEARN a new way to act. If a person has been raised to see the best in people, they will always see others in a positive light. I know that my birth parents did not come from easy households. I know both sets of their parents. I can imagine, as children, my birth parents had hard lives, but in different ways.

I can imagine my birth father was constantly having to live up to his parents’ expectations. I know they thought that he should succeed in certain ways, exude certain traits, and marry a certain kind of woman. I can imagine that would put a lot of pressure on a person, and affect the way they live their life. My birth mother was raised with physically and verbally abusive parents, which would explain a lot about how she acts. Her parents were constantly disregarding her and her siblings’ needs in order to purchase nonessential things for themselves. Until one actively seeks out change in their life, they will default to whatever behavior it is that they know. One cannot be blamed for acting the only way they know how.

Up until recently, I was not a nice person. Not to people who really knew me. I was able to hide all my nasty behaviors, until I got comfortable with you. Then I was rude, critical, angry and mean. I could never be satisfied. I was constantly feeling hurt by others, and lashing out as a result. It wasn’t until I actively sought out different ways to be that I was able to change. Up until then, I was only acting on what I knew. What I had been taught.

One of the affirmations I very much like is:

Everybody is doing the best they can; including me.

I used to repeat that affirmation when I was beating up on myself for mistakes I’ve made. Then I realized that the first part of this affirmation applies to others. “EVERYONE is doing the best they can…” I’ve started repeating that affirmation now when I feel others are being hurtful to me. I use it to remind myself that Crazy Jay may not be perfect, but he, too, is doing the best he can.

Now, let me say that, just because I believe that everyone is doing the best they can doesn’t mean that their best is good enough for me. If someone’s best is to be constantly critical, judgmental, demeaning and condescending, I do not have to accept them into my life. I am the one who decides who I allow in my world. If one is not evolved enough to overcome their hurtful behaviors, they do not need to have anything to do with me. I do not need to be mean and judgmental back at them, however. I can simply say to myself, “Hey, they are not far enough along in their journey to be able to interact with me in a way that will not be negative and harmful to me. This is not a person that I want to spend time with.” It’s as simple as that. I don’t need to judge them for what they say or do. I don’t need to critique them, or try to change them. I can change no one’s actions but my own. I need to accept everyone as they are, RIGHT NOW. I cannot expect people to change for me. It is up to me to decide how to react when I encounter a mean, hurtful person. My decision is to keep them out of my life, or to eject them from my life.

So, yes, I now believe that my birth family did the best they could. That doesn’t change the fact that they each exhibit deeply hurtful behaviors, and that I don’t want to interact with any of them. I forgive them for what they did. I forgive them their failures. I wish them all the best. I hope they can each find the happiness that comes from truly loving and accepting oneself.